Missing-411 was the first comprehensive book about people who have disappeared in the wilds of North America. It's understood that people routinely get lost, some want to disappear but this story is about the unusual. Nobody has ever studied the archives for similarities, traits and geographical clusters of missing people, until now. A tip from a national park ranger led to this three year, 7000+ hour investigative effort into understanding the stories behind people who have vanished. The book chronicles children, adults and the elderly who disappeared, sometimes in the presence of friends and relatives. As Search and Rescue personnel exhaust leads and places to search, relatives start to believe kidnappings and abductions have occurred. The belief by the relatives is not an isolated occurrence; it replicates itself time after time, case after case across North America. The research depicts 28 clusters of missing people across the continent, something that has never been exposed and was a shocking find to researchers. Topography does play a part into the age of the victims and certain clusters have specific age and sex consistency that is baffling. This is not a phenomenon that has been occurring in just the last few decades, clusters of missing people have been identified as far back as the 1800's. The manuscript for the research was extremely large so the story was split between two books, Missing 411 Western United States and Canada and Missing 411 Eastern United States. The Eastern version will be released in late March and will include a list of all missing people in each edition and a concluding chapter that draws both books together for conclusions. Some of the issues that are discussed in each edition: • The National Park Service attitude toward missing people • How specific factors in certain cases replicate themselves in different clusters • Exposing cases involving missing children that aren't on any national database • Unusual behavior by bloodhounds/canines involved in the search process • How storms, berries, swamps, briar patches, boulder fields and victim disabilities play a role in the disappearance • The strategies of Search and Rescue personnel need to change under specific circumstances Major news organizations do a deplorable job of covering stories and issues which are deemed too unusual or too far outside the box. Chances are, they will find a way to trivialize or ignore the disturbing evidence accumulated by David Paulides, a former lawman turned investigative journalist. The paper trail uncovered by Paulides through sheer doggedness is impressive, the evidence indisputable. People are vanishing without a trace from our national parks and forests, yet government agencies are saying nothing. At a minimum, this story deserves space on the front page of every newspaper in the country, and it warrants a formal high level inquiry by the federal agencies whose files leave little doubt that something very strange is unfolding in our wilderness. You will forever walk in the woods with a different awareness. David Paulides Four years ago I was in a national park conducting other research and was staying at a room off the park. On one of those nights I had a knock at the door and two off duty national park rangers stated they had information that they wanted me to hear. They explained that they had worked at several parks during their career and had participated in many search and rescues of lost visitors. They explained that they believed there was an inordinate amount of missing people and the park service was not conducting follow-up investigations, wasn't tracking missing people and didn't appear to understand the issues behind the disappearances. This event started the project I am working on today, www.canammissing.com. I have written three books (Missing 411) about the research our group has conducted and have filed dozens of freedom of information act (FOIA) requests against the National park Service and other institutions. The most famous FOIA we filed, asking the NPS for statistics and documentation of missing people inside their system. We first asked for data on Yosemite National Park. We were told that they didn't keep track of missing people, didn't have a list of names, dates or any numbers regarding how many are still missing. We read this statement in stunned silence. The NPS followed that with essentially the same statement about their entire system, 183 locations. I wrote back to NPS explaining who my publisher was, the books I authored and claimed an authors exemption to fees, asking them to collect the data and forward to us. The response, my books were not in enough libraries to qualify for the exemption, something nobody can find as a requirement in any FOIA documentation. The NPS then stated that if I did want a list of missing people from Yosemite, that would cost $34,000, if we wanted the list from their entire system, that would be $1,400,000.

• published: 14 Jun 2014
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